The Sunset of Dissolution
by DieInVinter
Summary: Everything is Illuminated Set the night before Alex, Jonathan, and Grandfather find what's left of Trachimbrod. I imagine this conversation happens before the trippy dream sequence. Slash ... it just snuck up on me, I swear.


-1"Jonfen … do you think my grandfather is … distressed?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, 'what do you mean?' If I meant something else, I'd say something else," Alex snapped, turning over to face away from Jonathan. "It's like he is dreaming, even when he is not in repose."

Sleeping on what used to be a battleground was inexplicably odd to Jonathan. The grassy expanse seemed haunted, and when he squinted in his half-dreaming state, he could see phantoms of tanks roving the land, and hear faint noise from guns shot over half a century ago. He knew these apparitions were merely a gap between what his eyes perceived in the gloom and what his imagination filled in, but nonetheless it filled him with fear and the dark fascination he had for warfare. The field was calm with death, the cool air still ringing with the anguished screams of the hunted. But as always, he knew he was the only one could still hear them.

He didn't know ho much time passed while he lay inside himself being tormented by private nightmares. Embarrassing as it was to admit it to himself, he derived a sense of security from Alex's sleeping presence next to him. Which was irrational, of course, as there was absolutely nothing his fellow searcher could do to dissolve the ghosts of a place sunken in the dark and a mind sunken in deeper darkness still. Regardless, he clung to his friend's consciousness, to satisfy the urge to reach out and physically touch his sleeping form.

"Jonfen?"

"Yeah, what?" replied Jonathan, slightly panicked that Alex knew what he was thinking about.

"Why are you manufacturing the breath on my back?"

Jonathan flushed red with embarrassment. He didn't think he was _that_ close to him.

"I'm sorry, must have shifted over here while I was sleeping!" he said quickly, and rolled over so that he could be manufacturing his breath in the opposite direction.

"Bullshit. You have not been sleeping." Jonathan's panic reached its boiling point, and his nerve endings seemed to double in number. So when he felt Alex's breath on the back of his neck, a warm wind seemed to pass through his whole body.

"What -- what are you doing?" he demanded in a panicked voice.

"I believe there is an idiom for it. What I am doing, Jonfen …" Alex explained while Jonathan felt the breath travel form the back of his neck around to his ear, "is making you eat your own pills."

Jonathan did not bother to correct the phrase as he usually would have, as he couldn't make any noise at all at the moment. He found his voice right as the breath had reached the side of his face.

"Okay, all right! I get it! I won't breathe on you anymore!" he said, looking up into Alex's half-smirk, which he only wore when he was either in complete control of a situation, or lying about his height, dancing ability, frequency of carnality or the various ridiculous positions in which his committed it.

He moved his mouth right above Jonathan's, until there was only a centimeter of space between them. Jonathan drew back, each eyebrow knitted towards the other. Alex paused, and flashed a small smile, tilting his head one side and raising an eyebrow.

"Now I can see why you are virgin."

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Jonathan, offended, pulling his blanket cover up to his chin.

"You are too uptight, Jonfen. You merely need to allow events of occur."

But Jonathan did not have time to contemplate Alex's advice, as his mind was occupied with many other thoughts, most of which concerned the weight of the other man's lips on his. When he unclenched his eyes, he saw that Alex's were serenely closed, a fact which only added the clamor of thoughts.

Alex drew his face away from Jonathan's, and looked over at the fire crackling only a few feet away from them.

"It is a good thing he is absent. He would definitely punch me if he had witnessed. And also may have informed Father, who is a _first-rate_ puncher."

"Why did you do that?" Jonathan asked quietly in a state of shock.

"Why did I do what, Jonfen?" Alex returned, eyes shining with delighted malice.

"J-just now, why did you just … do that?!"

"Three reasons. The first is being, you were manufacturing the breath on my back, which awoke me, and also spleened me. The second is being, to cause you to experience at least one act of carnality in your life as not to appear as pathetic, and third is being that you look so, so cute in your pajamas," he said, counting off the reasons which Jonathan considered rather illegitimate on his fingers.

As Jonathan perplexedly attempted to understand how one could be annoyed, sympathetic, (if this was sympathy, he did _not_ want to endure generosity) and amorous all at once, he failed to notice that Alex had undone the first button of his "so, so cute" flannel pajamas. Sharply realizing that Alex's logic was far too much of a slippery slope for him to easily ascend, he quickly sprung up to a sitting position in an attempt to keep the next button from coming undone … only to find himself mouth-to-mouth with Alex again. Alex seemed very pleased at this, and lowered his eyelids, bringing his left arm behind Jonathan's back to rest on his left shoulder, exerting more pressure from his side of the kiss, then offering his tongue. Jonathan started at this, but out of curiosity, unclenched his teeth, and allowed Alex's tongue into his small mouth. Ashamed as he was to admit it to himself, and even more ashamed as he was to let it be known to Alex, this strange sensation excited him. Alex was slightly flushed himself, despite being a self-proclaimed veteran engager in carnal acts. Jonathan also noticed a certain degree of … _tightness_ … Alex's pants had mysteriously attained in a matter of minutes, and was infinitely glad that he himself was still halfway hidden. Alex appeared to have noticed this himself, and he unzipped and unbuttoned the fly of his jeans, never taking his eyes off of Jonathan. In an attempt to halt the situation, Jonathan said rather quickly, "You look so much better without your hat!"

" … What?" asked Alex, frozen in the act of pulling the jeans down, which now hung about his hips.

"Your hat. You look better without it."

Alex adapted a concerned expression, as he had always believed that the hat was a premium addition to whichever one of his many tracksuits he happened to be wearing at the time.

"Why is this?"

"I dunno. I like your hair?" said Jonathan, hoping it didn't sound as much like a question when it came out of his mouth as it did in his head. It was true, though. The Ukrainian's black hair lent him an air of handsomeness and severity that the hat just stole and replaced with sheer silliness.

"I am also liking your hair. The way it looks when you are not always brushing it, I mean."

"What? But it always looks terrible unless I --" Jonathan said, feeling his messy hair with one hand, and reaching for his bag with the other. Alex stopped Jonathan's hand with his own.

"It does not look terrible, Jonfen. In truth, it looks very unterrible. So do not mess it up by fixing it."

He gripped Jonathan's hand in his and moved it up behind Jonathan's back, gently forcing him to lie on the ground again. He eyed him for a second, before drawing back again to shed the white shirt he'd been wearing. The fire behind him caused the edges of his figure to glow softly, and despite his physique's unremarkable muscle structure, Jonathan found himself in awe of it. He was long-torsoed and slim and in the act of leaning over him again. Now he was undoing that second button, and Jonathan just couldn't stop him. He just didn't want to, even though he knew what they were risking by doing this. Third button. Why _were_ they doing this anyway? Neither of them were gay … although Alex sure did dress like it, Jonathan reasoned with himself. Fourth button. _I'm not gay. No one's ever told me that they thought so, anyway. I like girls … I'm just a putz around them. _Fifth button. _Of course I'm not attracted to Alex. Or any other guy, for that matter._ But the sixth button's snap told him something quite different.

"What are we going to do, Alex?" he asked in a rigid tone. Alex scoffed at this seemingly innocuous inquiry.

"We are going to be carnal, yes?"

"No … in life."

"Well, first we are going to make sex, and then we will look for Augustine."

Jonathan sighed, not surprised that Alex had missed the point of the question altogether.

"You are trying to stall me, are you not?" asked Alex as he pulled out the pajama shirt from behind Jonathan's back and cast it a few feet away, before sitting up again. "But I am not the type of person who forces another person to do a certain thing, especially when that thing is being carnal. So I will let you decide, Jonfen."

"I … I'm …"

Alex raised his brow, awaiting an answer.

"You must tell me now to stop, or I will assume that you are a wanton person."

Jonathan couldn't bring himself to say anything at all during the five seconds through which Alex impatiently waited.

"Okay. Time is over, and I am assuming that you are a wanton person."

"Alex! Think about this! Rationally, if you can. Your grandfather isn't here, but he could come back any minute! And if he sees us doing anything … wanton … all hell would break loose, right?"

"This is another thing about you that I have noticed. You never take risks."

"I'm in the fucking Ukraine! Eastern Europe! Is that a big enough risk for you?"

"That is not the type of risk I am talking about, and you know this."

"Well then, what type of risk _are_ you talking about?"

"Sure, you are in the Ukraine. And you are an American. Which means people want to take things from your bags or charge you extra fee or maybe kidnap you. But even if you endure one of these things, you are remain the same person after. What is happening right now is not one of those things."

"I think I understand what you're saying."

"Good. You need to." Alex scrutinized him for a few moments. "Good night, Jonfen." He abruptly plopped back down on his pillow, and turned away.

Jonathan gingerly fell back down onto the ground, gazing far off towards the other side of the field. He thought for a while about it. Just now, he'd denied his curiosity for the sake of safety and fear of appraisal. He'd never denied it before. Curiosity made him construct his polyethylene mural out of compulsively collected family artifacts. Curiosity made him pocket most everything he got his hands on. Curiosity made him come halfway across the world to haphazardly search for the past. But this was a definitely different breed of it, one that couldn't be pinned on genealogical sensitivity or OCD. This was a poison, and it was spreading fast.

He tried to sneak a quick look back at Alex. He was hunched over, halfway in the fetal position, most likely glaring off into space and satisfying his id with thoughts of Jonathan being killed in various ways. He decided that the cruelest way to punish Jonathan for the schmuckish way he was acting was to deprive him of his plastic bags. Or better, hold them hostage until the American realized that this may be the only opportunity he would _ever_ have to be carnal with _anyone_, seeing as Alex was probably the only one in the world who could stand to be around him for an extended duration of time. He slowly turned over, making no sound, and observed Jonathan. He didn't see his not-cool fanny pack anywhere. Was he … wearing it? They were on the countryside near the Polish-Ukrainian border! No one was going to take his documents! Not to mention, wearing a fanny pack to sleep appealed to Alex as extremely uncomfortable. Then again, Jonathan never looked quite comfortable no matter where he was or what he was doing, he reasoned, as he surveyed the cocooned tourist who was desperately trying to impersonate sleep.

Stealing the bags would be so … perfect. But it would be near impossible to steal them as long as they stayed in that unfashionable pack around Jonathan's waist. IF he tried, Jonathan might assume that he was reaching for something else altogether, and the last thing he needed right then was a misunderstanding. So he just continued to fume silently under his own blankets, wishing all the while that he could get under Jonathan's.

As it turned out, this was unnecessary. Something gently gripped his right arm.

"Hey … Alex …"

"What is it this time," he replied brusquely.

"I … want to …" Alex could hear how forced a confession this was. It quieted him for a bit.

"It is too late for this. You have already made your decision," he said in a bored monotone, masking his giddiness.

"You have to believe me, I'm … I never noticed before, that you're so …"

He pulled Alex's arm towards him, and he turned over, staring at the Jew with great intensity. Jonathan returned the stare, then moved his gaze down to Alex's mouth, which he kissed, softly. The innocence of the act amused Alex, and he gripped both of Jonathan's shoulders and rolled over him, pinning him on the ground. He returned the kiss almost violently, moving his hips up to bring them across Jonathan's, who recoiled slightly at first, but then returned the motion with twice the pressure. Alex laughed a little at this, relishing the feeling.

"What's so funny?"

"You are a surprising person." He slid over him incredibly slowly, and in such a tantalizing fashion that Jonathan clenched his eyes shut and grasped at the grass of the earth below them, and even in the darkness it was obvious to Alex that blood had rushed to his face. And other areas. "Who knew you had it in you … to do something like this …"

Not Jonathan, that was for sure. His mind was still racing over the last ten minutes, trying to sort it all out into cause-and-effect, but his ordinarily watertight logic was becoming rather waterlogged instead, sinking deeper and deeper into this sea of bizarrely colored desire, bliss, and fear. His thoughts were no longer anchored, but adrift, in Alex's scent, his taste, his touch. What captivated him most was his stare.

"Jonfen … you are sure?"

He nodded very slightly, eyes wide.

He leaned back over Jonathan, kissing him very softly, sure that this one small kiss would leave much more of a memory than anything else they'd do that night, or discover the next day.


End file.
